


Gentleman

by khirimochi (NekoAisu), NekoAisu



Series: big spender [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Au Ra Raen (Final Fantasy XIV), Awkward Conversations, Awkward Tension, Comedy, Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Sexual Content, Intimidation, M/M, Miqo'te Headcanon (Final Fantasy XIV), Miqo'te Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Modern Era, Not Beta Read, Original Character(s), Pining, Threats, Trans Male Character, for names and such, i can't edit for shite ya'll, the vault never happens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22126456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NekoAisu/pseuds/khirimochi, https://archiveofourown.org/users/NekoAisu/pseuds/NekoAisu
Summary: Haurchefant Greystone is a creature of habit. Every Friday night at exactly nine-fifteen pm, he sits down, powers up his laptop, and watches his favorite camstar stream. Every Monday, he goes to church and asks Halone to bless his father and brothers, both of blood and of oath. Every Wednesday he picks up groceries and flirts with the clerk from the florists shop on the walk back.His Saturdays are supposed to be quiet and comfortable, not heralded by his neighbor blasting ABBA’s“Lay All Your Love On Me”at seven AM like some sort of angelic kick to the consciousness.
Relationships: Haurchefant Greystone & Francel de Haillenarte, Haurchefant Greystone & Warrior of Light, Haurchefant Greystone/Original Character(s), Original Character(s) & Original Character(s)
Series: big spender [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1584481
Comments: 2
Kudos: 48





	Gentleman

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LeosLust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeosLust/gifts).



> i am a simple creature. i see the opportunity to make haurchefant scream internally and i take it. poor man,,,,,  
> please choose ur wanking sources wisely. use region blocks if u work in the online sex industry. don't be a dumbass like these boys. drink water. u know the drill already ;3c

Haurchefant Greystone is a creature of habit. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, he works out before morning shift. Tuesdays are spent doing laundry and picking up his apartment. Thursdays are reserved for emergency doubles and studying. Saturdays are supposed to be quiet and comfortable, not heralded by his neighbor blasting ABBA’s _“Lay All Your Love On Me”_ at seven AM like some sort of angelic kick to the consciousness.

As it is, he shuffles out of bed, stretches, and tosses a shirt on. Asking them to bump down the volume a couple dozen decibels needn’t require primping. Grabbing his keys to avoid being locked out (he had learned very quickly about the auto-lock feature the first time he made a laundry run), he exits his apartment and knocks on the door next to his. He barely has time to move his hand from the metal when it opens and he finds himself staring sharply downward at a superbly short Miqo’te. 

“Do y’ need s’mthin’?”

He blinks, the sound of ABBA flooding the hall from the open door, and says, “Yes.” There is a very acute twinge of emotion that says _“nice going, man. Great intro. You meet a handsome person and now you’re useless!”_

The Miqo’te blinks slowly and fiddles with their tomephone, the music pausing abruptly. Their ears flick a couple times before they ask, “And that is?”

“The music was, ah… rather loud,” Haurchefant manages, a little strained with how sharply he needs look downward. “If you could keep the volume a bit lower, it would be much obliged.”

They nod, agreeing easily enough, and make to go back inside before pausing. “I wouldn’t suppose y’ got a schedule f’r when th’ water is turned off f’r maintenance?”

Haurchefant frowns, the expression mild and born of worry rather than frustration. “Did they shut if off without notice, again? That’s strange,” he mutters to himself. “There should be notices posted in the laundry room and lobby, but the management is not always so forthcoming. My apologies.”

“Tha’s fine,” they reply, left ear rotating toward the rest of the hallway at the ding of the elevator. “I’ll try ‘nd keep it down. Knock on th’ wall if y’ need it turned down again, yeah?”

“Thank you,” he says, visibly relieved at their easy going nature. “I appreciate it, Mr…” He trails off, realizing that he does not have a name to put with the face, nor a way to address them, hoping he did not use the wrong title. 

“Fahmi Nikephoros, at y’r service,” they say, smiling knowingly. “And you?”

“Haurchefant Greystone. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

Fahmi nods and scoots back a couple of steps, not commenting on the usage of _Mr._ or otherwise seeming displeased. “I’ll get back t’ cleaning. Thanks for the visit and bein’ so nice about it, Mr. Greystone.”

Haurchefant wants to protest and say something like, _“Haurchefant is fine. Mr. Greystone is just a really uncomfortable title I hear all too often in court.”_ He instead excuses himself and unlocks his door, steps into his apartment, and wonders when the _hell_ Seekers got that handsome. Maybe it was just a Fahmi thing, but it’s distracting when someone’s eyes can see straight into your _soul─_ wait. He’s short, heavily accented, and has an irregular name for a Miqo’te, Seeker and Keeper traditions both far from aligning with something like “Nikephoros.” It isn’t uncommon for more reclusive tribes to take on names when moving into the city for ease of address, but it’s usually just the cutting of a couple Hs or something common enough they won’t be looked at twice for it. 

Maybe Fahmi _isn’t_ a Seeker? There has been the so-called “problem” with immigration from Norvrandt due to the tyrannical dictator of Eulmore pushing many to flee for the sake of safety and job security. Mystel are the Eulmoran variant of Miqo’te, he thinks? Maybe? Although, looking back on that, Kai-Shirr and his family still have no names remotely similar to that of Fahmi’s. Or appearances. Like black sclera and a worrying number of sharp teeth. Not that he was staring at his mouth (not at all! Seriously!). 

It is not his business to poke his nose into personal things that are not readily shared. 

With that in mind, he goes about making a quick breakfast of coffee and dry cereal─much to the eternal, spiritual disgust of his younger brother Emmanelain whose “sensibilities” lie in inheriting the family estate and _putting milk with my cereal. That is the law of breakfast, my good man─_ while tuning out the soft thumping of bass and muted chorus being accompanied by furious vacuuming sounds. Fahmi is… _eccentric,_ at the least. He wonders how on Halone’s frozen tit he’d managed to ignore the chaos unfolding a wall over for nearly an entire week. After the fiasco with Miounne and the half-ruined pie from yesteryear, he’s since stopped greeting new tenants. Francel refuses to let him live that down. 

With his breakfast consumed and the seven thirty alarm beginning to blare, Haurchefant resigns himself to the mansions of sleep deprivation. That, and the pile of laundry staring accusingly at him from the end of his bed. He’d skipped his usual haunt of the second floor washers on Tuesday in favor of taking a day trip to visit Francel at university. He does not regret it one bit, but… laundry is not a favorite chore of his. At all. 

Well, it has to get done _eventually._ Preferably before he runs out of clean underwear. 

Dumping the dirty clothes into his workhorse of a plastic basket, Haurchefant bemoans his lot in life. What he wouldn’t give to be some lordling’s son whose laundry could be scrubbed and hung to dry by servants and not his own hands. He hunts for his laundry card, a non-pajama shirt, and shoes other than his black chocobo slippers. He finds his sneakers half-shoved under his bed, the shirt hanging in the closet (a surprise that it is where it ought to be), and the laundry card… nowhere. He curses quietly. 

The music resonating in the wall pauses for all of a second before changing to a ringtone that shrieks something jazzy and thoroughly unintelligible. Haurchefant really, truly hopes Fahmi is not deafened by his own noise. Miqo’te have sensitive hearing, he’s been told, but after the ABBA and the ringtone (whatever it was supposed to be) he is beginning to doubt common knowledge. 

He paces, checking under his bags and in his wallet, the pockets of old jeans, wherever he may have left his laundry card. No dice. 

Picking up the basket and his peanut butter jar-turned-soap-container, Haurchefant exits his apartment. Fahmi’s door opens not even a second later and he yells down the hall, “Ey, Kamui! Wrong way, y’know!”

Haurchefant turns on reflex. It is probably the worst decision of his entire life. The name of his late-night dreams and thoroughly messed palms is not a common one. Hearing it is like a punch to the gut. A bodyslam of “oh fuck. _Oh fuck. Oh, holy_ mother _of fuck.”_ that never quite stops escalating because he can see the person wandering down the hall now and _yep._ He’s screwed. One undred percent abso-fucking-lutely screwed. Like Kamui had been on the stream after he dropped a tip so he’d use that di─ _aaaaaaaaaaaaand let’s stop there._ He needs to act normal and delete his entire history and maybe his entire existence because it feels awkward and unfair and just _terrible_ that he knows the look of his neighbor’s friend(?)’s ass better than he does the back of his own hand while said friend is none the wiser. 

Yeah, he’s so royally screwed. _Congrats, logic brain, you were right when you said it would be a bad idea to look on that cam site,_ he thinks while desperately trying to not think about Kamui’s thighs and how he sounds when he─this is not working. Mind over matter-ing it is just making him mind how absolutely fucked up the entire situation is and Fahmi is talking at him and─

“Y’ listenin’ t’me?”

Haurchefant smiles and it’s strained. He tries not to squeak when he says, “My apologies. My mind was elsewhere.”

Fahmi seems to take his excuse at face value and pats him on the arm. “I’s okay, Mr. Greystone. This is Kamui. We work t’gether s’mtimes.”

Haurchefant is fairly sure he short circuits and is running off pure disbelief and the same polite detachment he has when visiting his stepmother when he introduces himself and excuses himself to do laundry. Which is down the hall. Past Kamui. Who is staring at him very intently. 

“Ah. I seem to have forgotten… my soap. Excuse me.” He ducks back inside his apartment after fiddling with the lock and becoming increasingly embarrassed. When safely inside, he thumps his head on the door, groaning. 

“Really, man? Really? Not even the laundry card that you need! By the Fury…”

He hopes Kamui’s appearance is a one-off. The next week finds him half-sprinting down the hall to go and drag Estinien and Aymeric to karaoke so he can yell and commiserate with them over shared pining issues. The week after that has him tripping over the door jamb and crashing into someone like his physical coordination finally decided to match the turmoil in his brain. 

He sits up and gathers his wits and scattered wallet and keys. Someone laughs, the cadence familiar, and asks, “Are you quite alright, Mr. Greystone?”

“Fine, thank you,” he responds on impulse. “My apologies.”

Kamui smiles at him, adjusting his glasses and pushing hair back behind his horns. “Fahmi said you’ve been out of sorts. I apologize if I startled you, before.”

Haurchefant swallows, the motion sticking. He breathes in deeply before asking, “I don’t suppose we could do introductions again? I have been less than polite to you.”

“No harm done,” Kamui replies, posture and voice almost painfully casual. “So… hi. Nice to meet you. I’m Kamui Gaeric. I work at─” _The Ocular_ “─SSOS.”

“Sharlayan School of the Sciences, yes? A good friend of mine studies there.”

Kamui’s smile broadens. He fiddles with his hands as if nervous. “She wouldn’t happen to be a certain Ysayle Dangoulain?”

Haurchefant barks a laugh, surprised. “‘Tis her, indeed! I take it that your paths cross more often than not?”

“I work in the library and she is our most dedicated patron,” Kamui explains, and Haurchefant can’t help but stare at his mouth. “I have to make my shift, but it was nice to re-meet you, Mr. Greystone. See you another time?”

Haurchefant nods, asking if he should page a cab and getting a laugh in return. 

“Busses are cheaper. Than you, though. You’re a gentleman.”

_“Oh, hush,” Kamui laughs, still mildly breathless. “You’re such a gentleman.”_

Ah. There it is. The accursed horny he has. Haurchefant silently says a prayer for his last remaining brain cell. What a shame that the blood supposed to be sustaining it is flowing southward instead. 

“Have a good afternoon, Mr. Gaeric.”

“Kamui is fine.”

He wheezes a little. 

“Okay, Kamui, then. You’re more than welcome to use my given name as well.”

He gets a smile for all the suffering using the man’s given name nets him. “See you next week, Haurchefant.”

He isn’t sure he’ll survive that, but he still replies with, “See you next week.”

Kamui walks over to the elevators and steps in to the first available one, waving at him. Fahmi opens his door after the doors ding, pokes his head out, and stares accusingly at him. 

“What’re y’r intentions?”

“My _what?”_

Fahmi sighs, opens the door, and grabs him the by arm to drag him into his apartment with a surprisingly unyielding grip. “Intentions. Accent can’t make _that_ unintelligible. I think.” He says the last part most to himself, brows drawing together. 

Haurchefant sits down where Fahmi indicates and rests his hands nervously in his lap. “None. None at all.”

“You said that awful fast, Mr. Greystone.”

He screams a little internally. Maybe a lot. Hard to measure decibels when your internal emergency state has been tripped about seventeen times in one conversation. “Did I?”

“Yes,” Fahmi says, slowly and deliberately clear. “So, intentions.”

“None.”

The Miqo’te stares and does. Not. Blink. “Really?” He does not phrase it like a question.

“Really.”

He sits back and stops staring, yawning wide enough Haurchefant can hear his jaw _pop,_ and those are a lot of sharp teeth he would not like to have anywhere near him please and thank you. “You’re an idiot, Haurche.”

“I… do not know how to respond to that.”

Fahmi snorts, graceless despite his appearance suggesting otherwise, and says, “I know that look. Check the site in a week.”

Haurchefant startles. 

“Court ‘im if y’r interested,” Fahmi says, tone far from threatening but still somehow intimidating enough that Haurchefant has to avoid nodding violently on reflex, “but if I hear y’ w’re anything oth’r than an absolute gods-damned _gentleman,_ there won’t be much left of ya to be m’ neighbor, y’hear?”

Haurchefant gulps. Despite his diminutive height and generally─unobtrusive doesn’t quite fit. Unassuming, maybe?─neutral nature, Fahmi manages to make his hair stand on end. It doesn’t help that after sitting and having the time to actually examine the inside of his apartment, the presence of at least ten different awards for MMA and emergency response service sit like bookends on a disorganized shelf full of textbooks on topics Haurchefant can’t make out from his spot on the house. 

“Loud and clear,” he replies, voice a pitch above what he intends. 

Fahmi smiles and it’s mildly feral, more teeth than comfort. “Good.” He stands and walks over to the door, opening it and gesturing for Haurchefant to exit. “See you next week, Mr. _Greystone._ Don’t be a stranger!”

Haurchefant ducks into his own apartment and wonders if he can apply to switch floors. Or buildings. Or lives. 

The feeling from when he first saw Kamui in person comes flooding back in all its anxiety-ridden glory. He is so, _so_ absolutely and positively screwed. 

He still can’t stop wishing that next week would come faster.

**Author's Note:**

> fahmi my son please stop having such a strong accent ur killin me here
> 
> lmk if ya'll find any mistakes that need fixin!
> 
> hmu on:  
> tumblr ─ https://ffxivimagines.tumblr.com/ and https://house-nikephoros.tumblr.com  
> twitter ─ twitter.com/FlamingAceKiri  
> discord ─ NekoAisu#7099


End file.
